A Letter from Jesus

Last week I was browsing through the autobiographical sketch of my pioneer great-great uncle and noticed an entry dated Jan 6, 1900, that contains "A Letter of Jesus Christ."

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A little internet searching turned up just a handful of relevant links (see bottom). It appears to be a chain letter that circulated since at least the 1700's, a copy of which also made it into the autobiography of fellow-pioneer Oliver B. Huntington. (Out of convenience, and because it matches my relative's version pretty well, I am reproducing Huntington's letter below.)

The letter presents itself as a kind of protective charm; those who have a copy will be blessed and prosper.

I have not thoroughly read each copy I have found, but there are some differences. Most interesting is that Huntington and my ancestor appear to have a 'Mormonized' version. The Mormon elements are not overt, but references to the latter days, New Jerusalem, gathering of the ten tribes, and the temple are not in the other versions.

The distance from Iconium and years after the death of Jesus that the letter was allegedly discovered varies somewhat. Eighteen miles and either 65 or 53 years are the most common. Interestingly, my ancestor's copy has 12 miles and 15 years, whereas Huntington has 18 miles and 53 years (which agrees with two other copies). Thus' Huntington's copy appears to be transitional between older versions and my relative's. Also the year that Gabriel signed it varies among the copies.

From Huntington:

Purporting to have been written by Jesus Christ, and translated from the hebrew into the English language.

Written by our Savior, Jesus Christ, and found eighteen miles from Iconium, 53 years after our Savior's crucifixion. Transmitted from the Holy City by a converted Jew, faithfully translated from the original Hebrew copy, now in possession of Lady Cuba's family in Mesopaotamie.

This letter was written by Jesus Christ, and found under a great stone, at the foot of the cross. Upon the stone was engraved, "Blessed is he that shall turn me over." All the people that saw it prayed to God earnestly, desiring that he would make this writing known to them, and that they might not attempt in vain to turn it over. In the mean time there came a little child about six or seven years old, and turned it over without assistance, to the admiration of every person that was standing by. It was carried to the city of Iconium, and there published by a person belonging to the house of Cuba. On the letter was written the commandments of Jesus Christ, and signed by the angel Gabriel, 74 years after our Savior's birth.

A Letter of Jesus Christ.

Whosoever worketh on the Sabbath day, shall not prosper. I command you all to go to worship, and to keep the Lord's day holy, without doing any manner of work.

You shall not idly spend your time in bedecking yourself with superfluities of costly apparel and vain dresses, for I have ordained it to be a day of rest. I will have it kept holy, that your sins may be forgiven you; you shall not break my commandments, but observe what is written and spoken with my own mouth. You shall not only go to the temple, but also send your man servants and maid servants, and observe my words and commandments. You shall finish your labor every Saturday in the afternoon, at six o'clock, at which hour is the preparation for the Sabbath.

I counsel you to fast five Fridays every year, beginning with good Friday immediately following, in remembrance of the five wounds which I received for all mankind.

You shall diligently and peaceably labor in your respective callings wherein it has pleased God to place you. You shall love one another with brotherly love, and cause them that are baptized to attend worship, and receive the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper; and to the members of the Church, in doing, I will give long life, and many blessings; and your land shall flourish, and your cattle shall bring forth in abundance. I will give unto you many comforts in the greatest temptations; and he that doeth contrary shall be unprofitable. I will also send hardness of hearts upon them till I see them; but especially upon the impenitent and unbelieving.

He that giveth freely to the poor, shall not be unprofitable.

Remember, he that hath a copy of this letter, written with my own hand, and keepeth without publishing to others shall not prosper; but he that publisheth it to others shall be blessed of me, and though his sins be in number as the stars in the sky, and he believe, he shall be pardoned; but if he believe not in me and my commandments, I will send my own plagues upon him and consume him, his children and his cattle. And in coming ages, when my saints shall arise in various regions of the earth, I will be with them when they go forth to baptize the nations in my name, even as I submitted to be baptized by my servant John, and I will bless my people in all their afflictions, and will strengthen them when persecuted by their foes, uphold them when nigh unto falling, and establish their feet even when walking in difficult and uneven paths.

In the latter days, when the New Jerusalem, my holy city, shall be sanctified and consecrated on the earth, then the ten tribes shall be gathered together as to one holy temple, and my glory shall be there, and their reward shall be great; and whosoever shall have a copy of these my words, and put their trust in me, and shall obey the ordinance which I have commanded, them will I deliver in times of storms and famine and pestilence.

---

Other copies:
1950?
1795
1739
1800's?

Also, note that Huntington and the 1795 source share another letter written to Jesus along with Jesus' reply.

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FARMS, Science, and the Afterlife

The latest Journal of Book of Mormon Studies has an article by Robert Rees titled, "The Book of Mormon and Automatic Writing."

I was surprised to see a little discussion about prominent skeptical investigator James Randi, then I understood why. Rees discusses scientific studies that purport to support the existence of an afterlife. He specifically references Gary Schwartz and his book, The Afterlife Experiments, which describes studies that provide evidence that mediums can receive messages from the dead, and he (Rees) finds Schwartz's studies convincing.

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I believe that the evidence suggested by some automatic writing, as well as the intuition studies of the Institute of HeartMath and the afterlife experiments of Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek, presents a compelling argument for the possibility of communication from the immortal to the mortal world.

I hadn't heard of Schwartz until I read the article, so I haven't read his book, but you can bet that his claims have not gone unnoticed by skeptics. Rees provides a few references that are mostly a he-said-she-said spat between Schwartz and Randi. Although in a footnote he mentions that the Skeptical Inquirer has covered Schwartz, Rees doesn't provide any links (I wonder why). So here you are:

A Critique of Schwartz et al.'s After-Death Communication Studies

How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments

How Not To Review Mediumship Research

Hyman’s Reply to Schwartz’s 'How Not To Review Mediumship Research’

My thoughts:

1. Claims of scientific evidence of the paranormal are like claims that the head cheerleader likes you. You want to believe it, but you better make sure it is reliable information. Skepticism is warranted to prevent you from falling hard, looking like a fool, or both. If there is reliable evidence that the afterlife exists and that mediums can contact the dead, then further and better studies done by other people will confirm it. Otherwise something else is going on.

2. Do we need to appeal to others' claims of paranormal activity to make Joseph Smith seem more authentic? I have some doubts about whether that is a good idea, particularly at the flagship of LDS apologetics.

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Determinism, Reductionism, and Regressionism

Jim F. over at Times and Seasons has raised the issue of naturalism and evil. Rather than display my ignorance on a high-traffic blog, I'll do it here. Specifically, I want to comment on Blake's comment:
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I believe that Jim’s argument is valid if by naturalistic explanation we mean deterministic physical explanation where everything is explained as merely a function of what went before so that the universe at t1 determines all subsequent states of the universe. In such a universe there is no free will of the type necessary to make choices that are truly self-expressive or that arise from responsible choices; rather, we are merely algorithmic processors of what went before and nothing is truly novel because it was already implicit in the prior states of the universe. In that case, I don’t see how there could be non-nihilistic meaning or responsibility. For example, my choice of my wife is fully explained not by my choice to love her; but by the physical states of the universe. I don’t see how there could be such a thing as truly meaningful life in such instances.

It goes on a little further with that kind of talk. Maybe it is a misunderstanding of language, but I don't get it. Maybe free will, evil and so forth cannot be explained by our current science. But if we grant that such is the case, it seems to me that you can either mean that you are waiting for more forces to be inducted into what we recognize as natural, or you are locked into an infinite regression of hierarchy needed to give anything meaning.

Either my love for my family (or the existence of evil, or free will) is an emergent property of the fact that the universe has four fundamental forces (or one, or eight) or the fundamental forces of the ultimate multiverse, or the alternative is to posit that each realm derives meaning or essence from a higher realm, and so on for infinity.

If, in the next life, God welcomes me to exalted realms of happiness and then fills me in on the absolute root of all things, shall I feel that my whole existence is a sham?

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Free Book: Evolutionary Science and Society

I don't know much about the organization that put out this book, and I haven't been able to give it a thorough reading, but it looks great! I recognize the names of several of the contributors as being prominent in science.

Topics covered include: the origin of life, constructing the tree of life, placing humans in the tree, history and philosophy of science, science and theology, basics of how evolution works, and practical applications.

You can download the whole book, or individual chapters, as pdf files. Did I mention it's free? So go get it, and then you can print out chapters to read at your leisure.

Once again, here is the link.

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DNA and BofM: Signature Response to Stewart's Article

Signature Books posted a response (Nov 16, 2006) to David Stewart's article published at FAIR and FARMS. I previously commented on the article here and here.

Most of the writing is unattributed, but it does contain a response from Simon Southerton on the specific issue of Y chromosome haplotype Q. Even better, there is a link to this paper on Jewish genetics. I'll have to digest it when I get a chance.

There is a history of bad blood between FARMS and Signature Books, so the somewhat snide tone (of the unattributed writing) is not unexpected, although unfortunate. But I can't say that FARMS doesn't deserve it on this one; the writer picked up on some of the same issues I raised before.

Also, I just ran across this page on the Signature Books website. It looks like a hypothetical migration scenario--like that of the Book of Mormon--was posed to several scientists and their comments have been posted. They are worth reading through; most of the answers boil down to 'it depends.' The answer that Henry Harpending (a National Academy of Sciences member) gave should look pretty good to an apologist's eyes.

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Jeffrey Meldrum on Bigfoot

Jeffrey Meldrum has been in the news recently. He is a professor of anatomy at Idaho State University and is a co-author, with Trent Stephens, of Evolution and Mormonism as well as a FARMS article on DNA and the Book of Mormon. He is also a star in Bigfoot research. (I kind of wish I didn't have to write 'Book of Mormon' and 'Bigfoot' in the same paragraph, though of course some would say it's appropriate.)

AP news article: here
NPR Science Friday interview: here. (In the interview, Meldrum maintains that the university faculty are generally not as negative as the AP story sounds.)

He has also authored a new book on the topic: Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. I'd be interested to read the book at some point. There's a chapter on DNA, but from the NPR interview I understand that they really don't have any yet (other than samples that have turned out to be bison, or some such). I'm on the skeptical side, but it would be really cool to be wrong.

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Science Investigating Religion; Speaking in Tongues

There is a post over at The Panda's Thumb about science investigating religion, that I think makes some good points. I noted this paragraph:

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Modern medical science is based precisely on comparing the outcomes of different interventions in order to choose the most effective to maximize quality and/or quantity of life. And once the data are known, it is standard medical practice to allow every patient to follow the course of intervention that most satisfies one’s individual preferences and goals. Most of us would consider having the choice between more or less aggressive cancer therapy options, weighing quality of life and survival expectancy issues, to be an absolute positive. I see no reason why the very same should not apply to the option of choosing between different religious practices based on similar parameters, should they be shown to indeed significantly affect life expectancy. In fact, assuming the health benefit of religious practice could be satisfactorily demonstrated, even if the effect of changing one’s religious practice were just marginal on an individual level (say, one month’s longer lifespan on average), the cumulative effect at population level could be enormous, giving the vast numbers of faithful. Just from a public health perspective, it should arguably be considered unethical not to investigate the issue and disseminate the results.

It strikes me that while Mormons are pretty cautious about science and scholarship proving the Book of Mormon or other particular doctrines, we do seem to like touting the 'fruits' of the gospel, which usually include such things as good health (thanks to the Word of Wisdom), somewhat lower divorce (thanks to temple marriage), and so forth.


Also in the news is a neuroscience study on speaking in tongues. He is an atheist, so you would expect him be a little sour about such things, but I think PZ Myers makes good points.

This is a paper that reports quite ordinary changes in the level of brain activity during glossolalia; there are no traces of possessing spirits or other extra-cranial meddling entities, and there is no provision in the work for detecting them if there were.

Mormons tend to be more practical about speaking in tongues; these days our conception of it bears little resemblence to how other Christians view it. But the larger point is that if you want to show that the brain is being acted upon by an outside influence, you're going to have to have a compelling model system.

I think that, ideally, verifiable intelligence would be communicated. That sounds like criteria that Brother Joseph would support.

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Blogger Reaches Milestone; Sees Promised Land

I met with my dissertation committee a few days ago. They critiqued some of my work, and they have a few more things that they want me to do, but they gave me the green light to start wrapping up my benchwork and write my dissertation. My blogging will therefore be rather light for the next few months. Rather than kicking around blogging ideas, I need to spend the time and mental resources on being an expert in my field, and getting the @#$% thing written. Oh, and finding a job too.

I hope that the MA administrators won't be too quick to kick me out of my cozy spot on the aggregator. (I suspect that more than one of them will be quite empathetic, having done--or preparing to do--the same thing.) I imagine that I will do some quick posts from time to time for diversion, but I will probably be mostly ignorant of what is going on in the bloggernacle. Feel free to email me if I'm really missing something.

But don't worry, I plan to pick up the pace again after defense day. Because...

I'll be back, when the day is new, And I'll have more ideas for you, And you'll have things you'll want to talk about. I will too.

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